Badiucao

Badiucao (Shanghai, 1986) has established himself on the international stage thanks to social media, through which he spreads his message all over the world - his twitter account @badiucao is followed by more than 100 thousand people - and constantly challenges the Chinese government and censorship.

His artistic-political vocation was born in 2007, when, as a law student at the University of Shanghai, he saw the documentary The Gate of Heavenly Peace, a clandestine film directed by Carma Hinton and Richard Gordon on the Tienanmen Square protests. The artist develops a firm decision to speak out on the front line against any form of ideological and moral control exercised by political power, in support of the transmission of an non-plagiarized historical memory. His political commitment is expressed, in fact, through the creation of participatory campaigns, posters in public places, illustrations and online activities, often constructed with a visual language that ironically evokes communist propaganda in a Pop vein, reproducing its graphic style, colors and tones.

Thanks to his social media and communication campaigns organized by him, Badiucao, from Australia, has carried on his own resistance activities by becoming the only channel unfiltered by government control able to broadcast the stories of Wuhan citizens during the 2020 lockdown. In the same year, he was awarded by the Human Rights Foundation the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent, intended for artists who creatively denounce the deceptions of dictatorships.

He is currently exhibiting in Prague at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in a solo exhibition entitled “MADe IN CHINA”, curated by Elettra Stamboulis.